BEEF PORK LAMB VEAL & TYPE

Tobias Frere-Jones and Nina Stössinger will present their signage & identity typeface design for the new Essex Market, and share the thinking and process behind it. Newly housed in a brand new building (the Essex Crossing development on Delancey and Essex Streets, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan), this indoor food market itself has served the city for nearly three quarters of a century. The typeface anchors this newest incarnation of the market in its history, by referring back to some of the meat market’s earliest painted & neon signage. The designers have researched these original signs and reinterpreted them in contemporary form, adapting the fonts for various applications and media — including coming full circle to new neon signage. A case study that discusses questions of design, history, and technology; ways in which letterforms can shift and translate between eras and applications; and how the design of letters weaves into the story of the city and its visual memory.